Amazon feels the Bern: In Seattle on book tour, Sanders addresses huge crowd at company’s HQ

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Bernie Sanders
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at Amazon on Wednesday. (Twitter Photo / @danielbslater)

It’s been three weeks since the presidential election and months since the primary, but many “Feel the Bern” bumper stickers and signs are still proudly displayed around Seattle. Today, Sen. Bernie Sanders visited the city where he remains a progressive icon for many of its liberal residents.

Sanders’ first stop in Seattle, believe it or not, was Amazon’s downtown headquarters. The Vermont senator is promoting his new book, Our Revolution, which chronicles his experiences on the campaign trail.

This evening, Sanders is speaking at the University Temple United Methodist Church — a location that’s feels a little more “Bernie” than the meeting room at a big corporation.

The University Temple event is sold out and the Amazon stop drew a big crowd of employees eager to hear what the former presidential hopeful had to say. One attendee streamed a bit of Sanders’ talk, during which he expressed his frustration with how millions of working class people in America are dying at a younger age than their parents because of “terrible remedies” like drugs and alcohol. He also talked about his displeasure with the amount of youth that are unemployed and the amount of Americans incarcerated.

“I bring all these issues up, things I saw in my campaign, because these are not issues that many Americans are familiar with,” Sanders said. “There is a lot of pain and there is a lot of hurt in this country.”

Sanders implored the Democratic Party to “open its doors to bring you all in, to bring poor people in, to bring working people in, to bring people of color into that party, so that together we can go about the process of transforming this country in very fundamental ways.”

Here are some reactions from the crowd at Amazon’s meeting center:

Big turnout today to see Bernie Sanders today at @Amazon. Excited to see him!

A post shared by Hafiz Huda (@lostpear) on

Oh hey. Just hanging out with @berniesanders

A post shared by Rose Jones (@eddiemonsoon) on

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